All they want is a choice

On Aug. 11 inside a school gymnasium in West Englewood, more than 200 parents scribbled their child's name on a pink raffle ticket.

They crossed their fingers, prayed and waited.

Representatives of Freedom to Learn Illinois fished the names of 15 youngsters out of a bin. The kids whose names were called won scholarships to attend private schools of their choice. They wouldn't be stuck at their designated neighborhood school. Fifteen children from at-risk families went home that day with a new backpack and a chance.

School choice gives parents alternatives to traditional public schools. In some states, parents are given a voucher — public money — that they can spend on private school tuition.

Illinois does not offer broad, state-sponsored school choice. Nonprofit organizations such as Freedom to Learn Illinois have tried to fill the void, but their reach is limited.

Teachers unions routinely block attempts to implement school choice, including a pilot program pushed by former state Sen. James Meeks in 2010 that would have helped more than 20,000 kids transfer out of chronically underperforming, overcrowded Chicago public schools. The unions don't want the competition.

Meeks' bill passed the Senate but fell 12 votes short in the House. He and the bill's House sponsor, Kevin Joyce, have since retired from the General Assembly. No other bill has come close to a floor vote. And many of the schools Meeks identified in his legislation remain failing and overcrowded. Three. Years. Later.

A bill introduced in Springfield takes a new approach to school choice that its sponsor, state Rep. La Shawn Ford, D-Chicago, hopes will temper opposition.

Ford's bill would use money from lottery ticket sales to pay for 1,000 scholarships each year of up to $6,000. Students who live in the top-grossing ZIP codes for lottery sales would be eligible. Most of those ZIP codes are located in Chicago's poorest neighborhoods. One Chicago ZIP code alone, 60619 on the South Side, generates nearly $30 million in annual ticket sales.

When it was launched in 1974, the Illinois Lottery was supposed to be the panacea for education funding. It never happened. Lottery money merely replaced, not supplemented, what the state was paying toward K-12 education. It was an even swap, despite the fact that the lottery was sold to taxpayers as a way to boost education funding. To this day we hear from readers who say taxpayers were swindled by the lottery promise.

Ford's bill draws a straighter line between the lottery and education. It would cost the lottery about $6 million out of about $708 million in lottery proceeds that go toward special causes each year. Lottery money is spent on schools, breast cancer prevention, bricks-and-mortar projects, medical research and veterans programs. So why not scholarships?

The bill gets around one important argument against traditional vouchers: The scholarship money wouldn't come from tax dollars. Meeks' bill was controversial because it would have directed public tax money through students to private and parochial schools. Ford's bill uses lottery proceeds.

Ford said this plan would help both low- and middle-income families who feel trapped in public schools. Turmoil at CPS with school closings, leadership changes and last fall's teacher strike are driving more families to explore their options. More than 19,000 kids are on waiting lists for CPS charter schools.

Those families deserve the same opportunities that the wealthy and politically connected have. Thousands of parents don't have the financial capacity to move to a better neighborhood or pick up the phone and clout their kid into a magnet school. They deserve a shot at a better education, and they deserve it now.

Lawmakers: Don't let another three years slip away without implementing a school choice program, even a limited version like Ford's. It's a starting point. Don't let another class of Chicago students lose out to the teachers unions.

The parents of those 15 kids helped by Freedom to Learn Illinois were given a chance at a better education that day.

But hundreds more didn't hear their names called. They shuffled out of the gymnasium disappointed.

It's time — beyond time — for Illinois to help the parents and children who need it most, who are begging for a better opportunity. It's time to give them a choice.